He was the identical horse, in fact, ridden by
the black postilion who had grinned at me. I
had seen a volante.

I became intimately acquainted with the
volante ere l left Havana, and I learned to long
for it. I have yet faint hopes of acclimatising
it in Hyde Park. Some slight difficulty may be                                                            experienced in climbing into it, for the C springs
are hung very high, and are apt to wag about
somewhat wildly when the ponderosity of one
or two human bodies is pressed upon them. I
would recommend a few weeks' practice in
climbing into a hammock ere the volante is
attempted; but the ascent is, after all, much
more facile than that to the knife-board of a
London omnibus. Once in the curricle, you are
at your ease and happy. You are rocked as
in a cradle, and may slumber as peacefully
as a baby; or, if you choose to keep awake, you
may catch glimpses, between the canopy of the
hood which screens the nape of your neck and
the crown of your head, and the black linen
awning which shelters your face and eyes from
the blinding rays of the sun, of strips of life
and movement—foot-passengers, or riders in
other volantes. To keep a gig was declared
on a certain well-known occasion to be
an undeniable proof of respectability. But,
to ride in a gig drawn by a horse with a
plaited tail and silver harness, and conducted
by a postilion in a many-coloured jerkin and
jack-boots, I consider to be the acme of glory.

It behoves me to offer two brief explanations
with regard to the black postilion's attire.
When you come narrowly to inspect him, you
discover that he is not entirely a man of truth.
There is a spice of imposture about him.
Those breeches and those boots are not wholly
genuine. The first, you discover, are mere
linen drawers, instead of leathers; indeed, to
wear buckskins in the tropics would be a
torture, the hint, of whose possibility would
have filled the hearts of the managing directors
of the late Spanish Inquisition (unlimited) with
gratitude. I could readily forgive the negro for
his trifling fraud as regards the leathers, the
exigencies of climate covering a multitude of sins;
but what shall we say of a postilion who
pretends to wear good boots which turn out to be
nothing but stiff leather gaiters or spatterdashes?
These hypocritical boots are truncated close to
the ankle, even as was that boot, converted
by Corporal Trim into a mortar for the siege of
Dindermond. At the ankle these boots do not
even diverge into decent bluchers or homely
shoes. The bare feet of the black man are
visible; and on his bare heels and insteps are
strapped the silver spurs with their monstrous
rowels. Now a jack-boot, I take it, is not a
thing to be trifled with. It is either a boot
or no boot. This volante appendage is a
hybrid, and consequently abominable. The black
postilion may urge, it is true, several pleas in
abatement. First, nature has provided him
with feet quite as black, as shiny, and as tough,
as the extremities of any jack-boots that could
be turned out by Mr. Hoby, Mr. Runciman,                                                              or any other purveyor of boots to her Majesty's
Household Cavalry brigade. Next, the Moorish
stirrups into which he thrusts his feet are not
mere open arches of steel, but capacious foot-
cases—overshoes hung by straps to the saddle.
Finally, negroes are said to suffer more than
white people, from the insidious attacks of a
very noxious insect common in Havana—
a vile little wretch who marries early, and
digs a hole in the ball of your toe, in which he
and his wife reside. Mrs. Insect lays I know not
how many thousand eggs in the hole under your
skin, and inflammation, ulceration, and all the
other ations—even sometimes to mortifiaction,
the last ation of all—ensue. Pending the advent
of a nice fleshy great toe, in which they can
construct a habitation, the young couple dwell,
after the manner of the little foxes, in any
holes and corners that offer; and the toe of
a jack-boot, would present a very comfortable
lodging until they moved. So the negro postilion
sensibly cuts off the foot of his boot, and
his enemy cannot lie perdu awaiting him in a
leathern cavern.

For this queer vehicle, the volante, I
conceived a violent longing; and one of these
days I mean to have a volante neatly
packed in haybands and brought to Southampton
per West India mail steamer. A black
postilion I might obtain through the friendly
offices of the Freedman's Aid Society, and for
money you can have silver-adorned harness made
to any pattern in Long-acre. I am not quite
certain whether the metropolitan police would
thoroughly appreciate the inordinate length of
the volante shafts, although in the case of a block
in Cheapside the space intervening between
the horse and the gig body would give impatient
foot-passengers an opportunity to duck
under and cross the street comfortably; and I
don't know whether I should get into trouble
with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals, if I plaited my horse's tail up tight,
and tied it to the saddle-bow, when summer
heats were rife and flies were plentiful.

The volante! It is such a pretty name,
too; and, Shakespeare's doubt notwithstanding,
there is much in a name. Southey and
Coleridge and Wordsworth were bent on
establishing their Pantisocracy on the banks of
the Susquehanna—not because they knew
anything of the locality, but because Susquehanna
was such a pretty name. It is a very ugly
river; and, curiously enough, it is the home of
a bird possessing at once the most delicious
flavour and the most grotesque name imaginable
—the canvas-back duck.

The Cubans have a genuine passion for the
volante. Volantes are the common hack cabs
of Havana; and then the horse is often but a
sorry jade, and the negro postilion a ragged
profligate "cuss," the state of whose apparel
would have shocked Miss Tabitha Bramble,
had she travelled so far as the Antilles. But
the private volantes as far exceed the public
volantes in number as they do in splendour.
Everybody who can afford it keeps a